Human futures
The project Human Futures: Shared Memories and Visions is an international collaboration between cultural partners in Aarhus, Berlin, Liverpool, Vienna, and Montreal, supported by a grant from the EU cultural programme. Over a two year period it facilities the production of newly commissioned projects that respond to the ways we experience cognitive, networked, living and urban space. Projects address emergent issues related to our understanding of shared space, pervasive technology and collective action. For further info see http://www.humanfutures.info/
Networked Space
Wireless networks are everywhere in the urban realm, yet connectivity increasingly operates in the tensions between corporate-owned telecommunications infrastructures and community-owned networks. This tension is especially important to acknowledge when cities are promoting 'smartness', open data, and increased participation in the development of municipal services. In relation to citizen’s experience of public wifi connections, and the fantasy of always-on global connectivity, projects presented here both aim to draw attention to the geo-politics of urban networks through artistic experimentation. Sébastien Pierre’s Invisible islands provides a socio-technical infrastructure for the public to actively participate in the networks in quite different ways than current infrastructures allow. Studio Weise7 provoke our reactions by releasing a book about wirelessness that is fully operative; as we read The Little Black Book of Wireless, it reads us.
Sébastien Pierre – Invisible Islands
Worldwide, privacy is challenged while our dependency on networks is increasing. Governments and corporations are massively harvesting personal data. Citizens need to take back some control to preserve freedom of information. Based on the simple idea of tying information to the physical space, Invisible Islands is a project developed to explore how citizens can use inexpensive hardware and wireless networks to create information islands that allow to openly share information while preserving privacy. Disconnected from the Internet, the information available in each Island is only access through QR codes displayed in the public space, thus creating a naturally sheltered medium for the community to share and interact in the public space.
http://invisibleislands.org/
Studio Weise7 – The Little Black Book of Wireless
Bound in black cloth, The Little Black Book of Wireless contains a complete history of 802.11 and GSM wireless communications, exploits and vulnerabilities. Yet while this atlas of the unseen is a wealth of information, it comes not without risk: merely opening this dark tome is to risk being read by it. From the moment the cover is lifted, the book awakes. As pages are turned, a custom-designed computer within quietly studies its environment. Host-names and user-names, unencrypted passwords, HTML and email fragments, handset IMSIs, images and any other available identifying information within its reach are harvested and stored, made available on a website served by the book itself. Closing the book deletes all gathered data, returning the book to its dormant state. It is a book to be handled with caution.
